Cassette 3: El Museo de Arte Comtemporaneo (1974)/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires'' CATY: Welcome to El Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Lima. My name is Caty Velasquez, and I am the curator of our current exhibition, Cityscapes in Modern Art. We have collected work from a range of artists from all over the world, with help from several of our partner galleries. Included in the collected are three pieces by Claudia Atieno, including one on loan from the private collection of Atieno’s close personal friend, and artistic contemporary, Roimata Mangakahia. We are grateful for Roimata’s contribution to this collection, which she makes in addition to giving us an insight into Atieno’s featured works on this audioguide. We are honored to have Mangakahia’s insight into the once-famous, now mysterious Atieno, who has been missing for over 2 years. The controversy over her disappearance has generated speculation, ranging from the plausible to the conspiratorial. The opinions expressed in this audio guide are those of the narrator alone. You can find the works discussed here on the east wall of room two. For tapes discussing the other work included in this exhibition, please see the front desk. #### ROIMATA: It is impossible to discuss Claudia Atieno’s cityscapes without discussing her politics, which is difficult, as she herself never discusses them with anyone. There is little ground for speculation about what her politics are. Or what they were, perhaps. The most we have to go on is her art - and she contradicts herself there frequently. It’s possible to argue that her near constant rudeness to any government officials demonstrates feelings of antagonism or even opposition to The Society, but I am not sure. It is true, she was often rude - but this could as much be because of frustrations with bureaucracy as secret thoughts of rebellion. Atieno sketches cities frequently - it’s possible that the ideas expressed in these three paintings were often on her mind - but she rarely committed them to canvas. The cities Atieno chose to explore fully always seem to be those in a state of transition. It’s possible she is less interested in cities themselves as she is in change - in adaptation and movement, whether for good or ill. Of course, there have been plenty of alterations and transitions during her lifetime, many more than the three included here. She must have had her reasons for choosing to depict the three scenes she did, but as she is currently absent from the known world - hopefully not for sinister reasons, although some seem to take a strange delight in spreading rumours - it is up to each of us to try and decipher what her reasons might have been. #TONE# One - A Palace Removed With the removal of nations in 1952, came the removal of the semblance of nations, in the years that followed. Flags were destroyed, anthems forgotten, and vast buildings meant as much to give status to governing powers as to serve a practical purpose were demolished. There was preservation, of course, when the buildings in question were seen as having cultural significance outside of their nationalist roles, but often this involved the careful moving of the building in question to a more remote area, where its presence would no longer inhibit the development of more practical, necessary buildings. Buckingham Palace, by this time more a symbol than a useful building, and taking up valuable mid-city space, was carefully taken apart, to be reassembled in Somerset as a museum to the history of Former England. This process began in 1959 and took eighteen months to complete, and in that time the once grand and revered Palace became a shell, and was taken away, brick by brick, until it was an empty space, and then a new complex of affordable housing, shops, and office spaces was constructed in its place. Atieno’s painting depicts the Palace almost halfway through being dismantled. It is not particularly true to life, indeed it is close to full fantasy. Look at the demolition crew, each carrying, with graceful ease, upwards of half a dozen blocks on their backs. These stone blocks are almost 50 centimetres wide, and nearly as thick. Examine the crew member in the lower left: their unnaturally wide smile, the sharp angle of their back. How much can you carry on your back? How much do you smile while you do it? In addition, the interior of the Palace was stripped at the beginning of the process, in order to prevent looting and damage to invaluable artifacts. Atieno, however, recreated the rich decor in the half undone building. Lush red carpets stretch across the exposed floors, and lavishly upholstered furniture stands in place. There are even ornate vases on rare marble pedestals next to broken walls and wrecking balls. Notice the shadows across each room. They appear at first to be simply cast by the cranes that surround the building, or by the clouds that scutter across the sky above, but if you look closely these shadows appear almost human-like, ghostly figures, left behind. Do you see the ballroom on the right side of the painting. Which monarch’s shadows do you think are represented here? One of the Henrys? Victoria, herself? Or perhaps it is of the - at the time - still living George the Sixth, the last monarch of the Commonwealth? Not a ghost at all but a incorporeal symbol of a now powerless figure. It’s possible to interpret this as Atieno’s sympathy for the displaced monarchs. Or regret over the loss of national borders, and national identity. Many historians mistake Atieno’s criticism of the new Society for cultural conservatism. Alfra Bond of the Times called A Palace Removed “facetious slander.” “Atieno wants to preserve history and culture but not at the cost of progress and peace,” Bond wrote. I have trouble picturing this as being the case. Claudia had little respect for personal ownership of anything, whether a palace or a paintbrush. Indeed, I often found her to have considered my paintbrushes as her own, even when they were propped beside my easel, still wet with paint. She saw no sense in anything if that thing was not to be shared, so regretting the loss of a lavish palace inhabited by one family seems to me unlikely, for her. Claudia told me a story of inviting Bond to a gathering at her home in Cornwall. When Bond arrived, the entire party was wearing masks and silently staring at her. She tried to start several conversations, but upon realizing the futility of the endeavor, Bond drank a glass of champagne, ate a cucumber sandwich and left calmly. I believe that the shadows in this painting represent the future, and not the past at all. They are the people who would find use, and life, and joy in the space left by the building. The ghostly figures belong to the people who right now are living and breathing within the new walls that arose to replace those taken down. Or, of course, it could mean both those things, or neither. It’s possible Claudia simply saw an image she liked, and adapted it to suit her fancy. Perhaps I shall ask her about it, when she resurfaces. #TONE# Two - The Parade in Paris The wistfulness of A Palace Removed moves to strange melancholy in Parade in Paris. Paris did not look much like a city at all after the Great Reckoning, obviously, as so much of it had been destroyed, or repurposed for military use. I am not sure whether the scene depicted in this work ever took place, or if it did, whether Atieno was actually there, or simply heard about it later. I do not know how soon after the wars it is meant to be, or how far into the implementation of the new Society. But. Perhaps it does not matter. The scene shows a city broken. It is being rebuilt - there are cranes everywhere, and even one or two completed new buildings - but there is still, at this stage, more loss than renewal. Paris is in the midst of the impossible task of civic resurrection. And along the streets we can see a ramshackle, unofficial parade. Notice that the parade does not have floats or balloons, or a marching band. It is simply made up of people walking. Ostensibly, this is about citizens who own nothing, celebrating the end of the Reckoning. They cannot afford music, nor decor, but a parade is simply a momentous movement of people through a town. It is easy to look at this gathering and see the optimistic determination of humankind. Look at the faces of those in the parade. Are they optimistic? Are you? But the triumph of humanity is not Atieno’s story here. Look again at the parade. It is made up of people, yes. But more specifically, what kind of people? Do you see each man and each woman? Do you see their uniforms? Their vests? They are stopping work to march. Perhaps it is a strike. But there are still plenty of other workers doing their jobs. Look closer. Do you see their children? It is a parade of families. There is no reason for them to be there - they are not protesting anything, they are not celebrating anything. Unless they are simply celebrating their own existence, unless they are simply protesting the hardships contained within it. Atieno released this painting in 1968, but I believe she painted it much earlier. The painting is full of families, and the families are full of joy, and though they don’t appear to realise it themselves, they are walking towards a futures with no families in them at all. There are a lot of things Claudia could be saying here, of course. She could be deriding the implementation of a society that ignored the concept of family in favour of universal peace. She could be acknowledging that there is joy and unity in the midst of destruction. As it happens, I have a fairly strong opinion about this painting, although it is not one that I can support particularly well with evidence. I think this painting is a farewell. Claudia was not made to forget her parents, and her siblings, as those of us born a few years later than her were. She had to leave them, and relearn what they had taught her. She had to divest herself of her family loyalty and become part of a bigger world. But it turns out loyalty can linger in ways we don’t expect. I like this painting. This is a painting I like. ### Three - The Arising Both the London cityscape and the Paris one deal in destruction. Although the view of Paris includes aspects of rebuilding, and therefore, renewal, they serve more to highlight the remaining destruction and loss that surrounds them. The Arising looks at what was newly created in the changing landscape of society. It shows a street in Kota Tua Jakarta, probably in the early 1960s. Atieno visited the former Dutch East Indies with a mutual friend of ours, the artist Cassandra Reza - they travelled extensively together, for a time. The painting is simple, at first glance. See how the street, while mostly empty, has been rebuilt from scratch, with a specific purpose in mind. Low buildings line the street, with an open, grassy square about a third of the way down. The buildings are new. The square is carefully planned and cultivated. Look at the children in it, playing together with hoops and balls. Some of them are reading, some are sitting on the ground talking. What books are they reading? What are the children talking about? You know, but you have been made to forget. The complex depicted in Atieno’s painting set up on the abandoned street in Kota Tua was one of the first collective homes set up. You can see the caretakers dotted around. The children, of course, are all under ten. Once they are ten, they will be set on the path towards adulthood, leaving behind every memory they made in this place. It is a picture of innocence - but there is a darkness to it, somehow. Look at the adults around the edge of the park, their backs stiff, arms straight, faces almost without features. Do you feel a sense of tightly wound control? I only met Cassandra Reza once or twice while Claudia was there. I don’t know if Claudia knew that I had kept in touch with Cassandra, that I have even stayed with her once at her home in Nicosia. Cassandra has a large studio, full of work that the public has ever seen. Some of it was unfinished, some of it was barely started. I looked through it once. I don’t know if Cassandra knew that I saw the painting. The one of the street in Kota Tua Jakarta, with the new buildings, with the square. With the children and caretakers and innocence stained by control. It was her painting. It was different than the one you are looking at now. Notice the children in the public park, and the adults standing like prison bars around its perimeter. Cassandra’s painting had none of this ominous political subtext. It was a celebration of rebirth, of a new world. It was beautiful and inspiring, and I hope the world will see it some day, but I doubt Cassandra could prove at this point that she painted hers first. I can’t prove that either, but I know. All of us in Claudia’s life knew. In retrospect, I wasn’t surprised to find that painting. I honestly would have been more surprised not to. I didn’t tell Claudia. I never told Claudia. I didn’t tell Cassandra either. I don’t know what I thought Claudia would do, if I told her what I had seen. Maybe she would have demanded that I acknowledge her painting to be the better of the two anyway. Maybe she would have pretended not to understand. Maybe she would have thrown something. Maybe she will object to this if I ever see her again. I suppose I should say when I see her again. I am sure we will have words, if I do see her again, but Claudia didn’t hold grudges. Doesn’thold grudges. I’m trying to remember to use the present tense. Claudia is, not was. Claudia doesn’t hold grudges, but others do. mic to self Present tense, Roimata. Present tense. mic to sound engineer Okay, yeah, we’re done. Category:Transcripts